Sunday, June 11, 2017

THE SUMMER OF FLASH GORDON

Though he worked in comic strips for years before launching FLASH GORDON and had another successful strip, RIP KIRBY, for a decade after FLASH ended until his untimely death in 1956, I think it's generally agreed that FLASH GORDON was Alex Raymond's magnum opus. The character's adventures have been translated into other languages and adapted into movie serials, comic books, novels, big screen motion pictures, animated cartoons, and television series. FLASH inspired STAR WARS, for Pete's sake! And virtually all the adaptations draw their inspiration from Raymond's decade on the strip over any of the other material presented in its sixty years of existence.

As I discussed last weekend, lately I've been big into newspaper action/adventure comic strips, and I decided to write about one this year. SHATTUCK this past Friday was a warm-up for this: ten weeks looking at Alex Raymond's full original run on FLASH GORDON. I'll be using Titan Books' hardcovers for this project, and each post will cover between one and three story arcs. (The original strips weren't identified by story arc titles so far as I know, but in the intervening decades, the various plotlines have been divided up into arcs which seem to be universally agreed upon by one and all.)

Beginning this Friday, we'll travel to the myterious planet Mongo with renowned Yale polo star Flash Gordon, his girlfriend Dale Arden, and their trusty ally, Doctor Hans Zarkov. I hope you'll be along for the ride, too.